A hand’s worth of wyverns with mages —er, a human’s hand I guess, not mine— were swarming around the dragon coach along with a smattering of harpies, dragonoids, purple skinned angels, a dude with an eagle head, and a blue skinned demon with red hair and long horns riding a griffin.

I could see blasts of fire coming from on top of the dragon accompanied by the rapid-fire electric bolts of a magic cannon. Lena was hanging out of the cabin door with Priss and Marybell trying to keep her from falling out as she lobbed ice spells at the fliers. Sergeant Pria appeared to be a competent battle mage and was using some sort of bow to fire enchanted arrows that would chase the target until they hit. Even Toadwart and Roy were taking sniper shots from the windows when they could.

The mages on the backs of the wyverns weren’t making it easy for the coach defenders though. Most shots got blocked by aura shields or redirected by their own spell blasts. Those that weren’t involved in keeping the defenders busy were concentrating their attacks on the dragon’s left shoulder while looking for chances to attack the couplings securing the cabin to the dragon’s harness.

The mage on the back of the dragon was doing his best to throw shields up to block direct attacks but he didn’t seem to have the strength to pull off a full shield around the dragon while also returning fire. At the door to the cabin, a harpie was flapping within medium range and screeching. Based on the effect the sound was having on the occupants, it appeared to be a sonic based magic attack. Thankfully, it wasn’t affecting Lena and the harpie caught an ice blast to the face for her effort.

I tried transforming back to jet mode but found the arrows lodged in me were blocking some of the plates from shifting properly. I didn’t have the luxury of time to deal with the damage so I just put the arrows into [Inventory], opening up some unplugged holes in my mana circulation system. It would seem that losing my mana fluid drained my mana reserves faster than using spells, but the leaks were small for the moment.

With the obstructions out of the way, I was able to convert back and forth again and shifted back to jet mode. I [Blink]ed within range to close the distance and strafed the nearest wyvern. The mage on its back accurately blocked my shots with a shield while the pilot expertly maneuvered the beast to dodge me physically. Armament wise, I felt like I might as well be a biplane with a single machine gun. A couple sidewinder missiles would be pretty handy.

Maybe I could script a spell that was attracted to mana emissions. Load that into a tube with a small wind turbine, some fins, and a [Blink] warhead... Ah, but then I’d need actuators to position the fins and some sort of program to handle flight control... maybe I could work a proxy connection into something like that, like I did for Sentinel’s drones...

A blast of fire hit me from the left, sending me tumbling. Not the time Prime! I rolled out of the path of the fire only to get smacked by several flaming rocks. Each of the small meteors exploded on impact. I lost some armor plates and developed some new cracks with mana fluid leaks but none of the damage affected my functions.

The meteors came from the guy on the griffin. It would seem he was a higher class of mage. Maybe he was the leader here. More rocks started materializing around him as he chanted, but I wasn’t interested in taking the hits. I shifted to bot mode and opened fire, only for my shots to be blocked by two of the wyvern mages acting as his shields. A magic enhanced arrow hit me in the shoulder with the strength of a battering ram.

I tumbled and spun in the air, my shoulder plate engulfed in flames. I cast the plating off before the flames could reach my systems and changed forms, dodging another attack. Three of the wyverns bore down on me, their mages casting a variety of spells in my direction.

I shot off in a burst of speed, wrapping around the dragon and they gave chase. The cabin whizzed past in a blur as I came around and for the briefest of moments I made optic contact with Lena. Or at least it felt that way for me, she probably had no idea where my optics were in jet form.

I banked hard, dodging under the dragon’s wing with the wyverns following after me, their spells impacting against the giant creature’s skin. The dragon roared in protest and swung its head around. I headed in a straight line for where I could intercept those massive teeth as it opened up to take a snap at the bugs stinging it.

At the last moment I [Blink]ed to the side, narrowly dodging around the huge head. The wyvern close on my afterburners wasn’t so lucky and ended up a snack. Behind me, I could hear the crunching and some screams but I couldn’t devote any cycles to thinking about it.

More blasts came and I rolled out of the way, headed for under the dragon, sticking close to the coach. I pulled up hard, hugging the coach and zipped past the open door to see Lena launching something with a lot of blue light. Via my rear optics, I saw the lead wyvern make it past her but the trailing one was caught by a massive ice blade that suddenly extended from the cabin. The blade split the beast down the middle and fell away in a spray of blood.

Above the dragon, the griffin and his shields were engaged with the imperial mages. I shifted to bot mode, and flung my limbs out to act as an air break. The wyvern behind me just barely dodged me and shot past. I switched out my cannon for grapple claw and sent it flying, latching onto one of the wyvern’s wings.

The wing snapped like a branch and the momentum of the creature pulled me in an arc, slingshotting me at one of the others on shield duty. I switched out my punch blade for my flip-out extended blade and thrust it through the shocked mage’s shield and deep into the beast’s chest.

The wyvern instantly went limp and dropped from the sky. I put my feet to either side of the wound and pushed off to avoid going down with the creature. The remaining wyvern shield was under a heavy assault from the magic cannon so I focused on the griffin.

I changed back to jet mode and thrust forward, my gun blazing. The blue-skinned mage on the griffin’s back held out a large staff with a glowing red gem at its head. My shots slowed and hung in the air in front of him before being thrown back at me. Well that wasn’t fair. The return fire didn’t have nearly the velocity from when I’d sent them so they mostly bounced off of my armor plating, though I did gain a few new dents.

As I streaked past, the griffin reared up and slashed at me with its talons, screeching like an eagle. The blade-like talons tore through my wing, nearly taking it clean off. I rolled over and over with the loss of lift on my right side, losing altitude. I shifted back to bot mode, swapped my gun for the morning star and spun whipping the heavy spikeball at the eagle-lion.

It wasn’t able to turn quickly enough to counter me and the weight collided with its left hind leg. It shrieked in pain and for the first time, the mage on top of it looked angry. They chased after me as I dropped far below the dragon. I flailed around until I was able to get my feet under me and slow my descent only to feel firm pressure crushing on me from all sides.

The griffin soared downward at me as the mage held that staff out again. Through my ultraviolet filters, I could see the vague shape of a massive hand wrapped around me, holding me in place. Was this “mage hand”? Could Lena do this if I gave her the right stones for it? That thought would have to wait for another day.

Orange light, flared from large stones embedded into the mage’s gauntlets as flaming rocks took shape in the air around him. He lifted his arms up and the rocks were drawn to a point above him, merging into a massive boulder. His features were a mask of hatred, a vicious sneer splitting his otherwise attractive face.

“You’ve cost me dearly you wretched thing! Watch in helpless despair as I destroy that which you protect!” he spat.

He glanced upward at his growing meteor strike and did a double take. His sneer quickly vanished and was replaced with a look of shock then horror. The massive steel fist of an 18 foot Automata juggernaut smashed through his meteor, obliterating the mage and the griffin he rode on.

IronHide shot right through the explosion with a self satisfied grin before switching to a panicked shriek as he sailed straight past me.

“PAPA! HELP ME!” he screamed, as he headed for the ground some 200 meters below us.

The mage hand vanished the instant the mage did and I shot after Hide.

“Switch back to Little Hide, you idiot!” I shouted back.

“Yes?! Yes! Okay!” he called, as his gigantic frame dissolved and was replaced with his much smaller one.

With a handful of [Blink] jumps I caught up to him and grabbed him, pulling up no more than a couple dozen feet from the ground. I pushed the wind turbines as much as I could, slowing us, but we still crashed through the top layer of branches.

Through the fall, I held Hide close, cradling him as we bounced and smashed through the trees. The canopy gave way as we punched through it but the pause in impacts was short lived. Our fall suddenly stopped in a spray of sandy dirt, rocks, and mud on the bank of a thin river.

My arms fell to the side and relaxed as I tried to let things settle. Hide pushed himself up off of me and looked around. His optics wandered upwards and tracked the dragon he’d jumped from as it got further away.

“You could have just put me into [Inventory]...” he reminded me.

“Shut up. I didn’t think of it at the time,” I moaned.

I couldn’t feel pain anymore, but a bevy of warnings and alerts clouded my HUD, each wanted to make sure I was well aware of how much damage I’d sustained.

“Welp, we better get back up there. Miss Lena is going to be worried,” he tried.

I glanced at my system alerts before dismissing them.

“CloudBurst is shot... again... I have one functional wind turbine and the [Blink] crystal is cracked. We’ll have to catch up some other way... Also, I seem to be hemorrhaging a fair amount of mana fluid at the moment...”